About the Hosting Control Panel

Every hosting account comes with what's called a control panel. The control panel is what you will access to administer your account. There are numerous control panels used by web hosts and each one provides various options and features in it's own unique interface. Some are easier to navigate and use than others.

A simplified description of what the control panel does would be to compare it to driving a car. Instead of buttons, levers and gadgets that cars use, it's pretty much a point and click interface. The Digital Mouse Designs control panels utilize the Plesk interface.

Control panels can be a bit intimidating or overwhelming, especially if you're not the most web savvy person out there. If you are not familiar with control panels or their workings, it's best that you let your web site designer handle this portion of your hosting services.

Designers — it's recommended that you not give your clients access to the control panel unless you are confident that the client is knowledgable in this area.

Accessing Your Control Panel

Your control panel is accessed via a secure login page within your web browser. You should never ever give out the login information to anyone other than your designer. Doing so puts you in danger of unauthorized person(s) accessing your acount and potentially damaging your web site. When your hosting account is activated, you will receive a welcome letter which provides the necessary login and some additional information. You should save your welcome letter in a safe place!

Upon gaining access to your control panel, you may first be shown a page called the Desktop. To navigate away from this page but remain in your control panel, click the home button located on the far left side of the page.

Remember to always use the logout link located on the left side of the control panel when exiting the control panel. This is a security measure to help keep your web site account safe. Not utilizing the logout link may lock up your control panel for a duration of time and you may have to resort to paying for tech support to re-activate it for use.

Control Panel Responsibilities

Digital Mouse Designs is not responsible for any use of the control panel by persons (including the designer) which results in damage to the site, the control panel or the server. Furthermore, we are not responsible if you provide your login to someone and they access the panel and create problems. Any paid tech support needed to repair any problems in the control panel or your web site as a result of issues of misuse of the control panel will be billed to the client (that would be you!).

If you wish to learn how a feature in the control panel works, please first visit the SWSoft web site Flash Tutorials. These are extremely helpful in learning the features of your control panel. Not all features you see in the list of tutorials are available for every hosting account.

If you are still in need of assistance after viewing the tutorials, you're welcome to contact us.

Viewing Your New Site in a Browser

If your web site is under construction and the DNS Nameservers are not yet set to resolve to our server, you'll want to know how to preview your web site in a browser.

This is done by accessing your control panel and clicking on the home link on the left. In the lower row of icons you will see an icon called Site Preview. Clicking this will provide you with a preview of your web site. You really only need to access the control panel once to do this as it will provide you with a re-usable link in the browser address bar. If you save this link, you can then just click on it to preview your site whenever you want to without having to access your control panel each time.

Other Control Panel Features

We recently upgraded our Plesk Control Panel to the latest and greatest version and so information regarding new and newly updated other features available in it is not available to post on our site at this time. We are still learning ourselves in many cases! In most instances, a professional web designer will be able to determine how to use the additional features and many are best left to their level of expertise rather than to be used by one who's not experienced.

However, if you mouseover a feature that you wish to know more about, look to the left and you'll see a brief explanation and help links to assist you.

We'll add new information regarding the Plesk control panel as we can.

IP Addresses

Your IP address is provided to you in the informational eMail sent to you. IP addresses look like this: 64.119.177.220. You will have one of two: 64.119.177.220 or 64.119.177.221. Please remember to use the IP address assigned to and provided to you in your welcome letter.